Content marketing seemed to reach a tipping point last year. Now we have the backlash, but does it remain a useful tactic?  

Kelvin Newman, organiser of the Content Marketing Show:  

I’m a big fan of the Gartner Hype Cycle which plots the relative enthusiasm for ‘new things’. I think the backlash against content marketing is inevitable, and healthy. We’ll stop treating it as the next ‘big thing’ and instead treat it as business as usual.

Lots of companies have been doing things that could be described as content marketing for decades, and some cases even centuries. Now the latest bubble of hype has popped we can concentrate on the nitty gritty of delivering great content that achieves marketing objectives.

Jason Thibeault, Sr. Director, Marketing Strategy at Limelight Networks:

Content marketing will continue to remain a relevant tactic. In fact, all marketing will eventually become content marketing. The issue is the kind of content. Right now, it’s still product focused. Content needs to be helpful and useful, not just self-promoting.

That’s why content marketing is facing a backlash: because executives are measuring it like they have before only the incubation for content marketing is much, much longer. 

Doug Kessler,Co-Founder & Creative Director at Velocity

The hype will die down but not the practice.  It just makes too much sense: use your expertise to help your prospects… What’s not relevant or useful about that?  

Andrew Davies,COO and co-founder at Idio

Yes. Content marketing is a victim of its own (content marketing) success. So it needs to start proving not just talking. And that is exactly the shift. Building business cases that can scale with investment, rather than engagement metrics that often don’t.

Andrew Warren Payne, Senior Research Analyst, Econsultancy: 

It’s important to recognise that content marketing, despite the rise in the popularity of the term, is not a silver bullet. Indeed, it never has been. Instead, it encompasses a broad range of tactics and strategies but which are put together for common objectives and goals. I think the rise of the term came with the realisation that the sum is greater than the parts, along with the changes in search engine algorithms to surface the best content available.

As customers (both B2B and B2C) spend more time online and become more discerning in their research and purchasing behaviours, the need to provide the best content possible becomes even more imperative. What we are seeing is a rising tide which is universally lifting the expectations of customers. Those keeping ahead are doing well, but those trying to halfheartedly cobble together some information and throw it on a page are sinking. 

But it’s important to remember that any marketing activity should be carefully planned out before hand so the correct tactics can be chosen. The more common forms of content marketing will not work as well for every business or product so careful thought needs to be applied.

We’ve ridden the hype here at Econsultancy, and to prove it, here are more than 70 of the posts and reports we’ve written on content marketing